Young House Love

DIY Home Decorating Projects, Tutorials, & Shenanigans

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Our New Kitchen Porch

Finally took the photos and videos for this post and I can’t wait to share it because it changed our house in such a major way. Introducing… the area that we affectionately call our kitchen porch. Aka: the grillin’ spot with all the greenery. If you followed along on Instagram Stories for the last few months, essentially this side porch always existed, but after we closed off doors number 7 and 8 from our bedroom which led out here (yes our bedroom had 8 exterior doors & still has 6 of them – more on that here), it was just a floating porch without any door leading to it. Here’s an old photo to show

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Holiday Gift Guides For Everyone On Your List (With Stuff Under $19 & Even $9)

Every year it feels like we’re the last bloggers in all of blogland to get our gift guide up (is it me or are they coming out earlier and earlier?!), but the deed is done! We just do one post with three categories (adults, kids, and under $25), so here it is. We love including small makers and Black-owned businesses as well as some tried & true items from larger companies that we’ve bought & loved (like a favorite book, family game, etc) so let’s get into it. Gifts For Grown-Ups Here’s what we’re loving, either firsthand items that we’ve bought and enjoyed ourselves, things we’re getting for friends & family, or items that we’re

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Our Family Room: 1.5 Years In

We haven’t dropped in on this room since this post from more than a year ago about hanging our giant chandelier (how is that possible?! Where did that year go?!?!). This room in many ways has functioned well from day one for us – so I guess our infrequent check-ins make sense. We knew we wanted this big multi-purpose space to serve a few different functions like cozy movie room, a place to lay on the sofa and read/lounge, office/workspace for us, and an arts & craft desk for the kids that could also store all of their papers & creations while having another spot to store all of our board games and all of

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A Tribute To Burger

We shared some sad news on Instagram Stories last week, but wanted to make sure to post something here too, because Burger was such a huge part of our blog. Last Monday, our sweet chihuahua Burger passed away at the age of 15. It was a long wonderful life, but we miss him so so much. The house is way too quiet without him. We got him when we were 24 years old. Before we got married, before the blog, before we had kids, before almost every adult experience we had together. He was there through it all. He was always such a happy boy. We are so grateful for all the years we shared.

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7 Smart Storage Pieces That We Rely On Every Day

Anyone who lives in a small-ish space knows that thoughtful storage can upgrade so many aspects of your life at home when it’s done right (and it can be a daily frustration when it’s not done well or at all). No matter how big your rooms are or how many you have, you just want to be able to access things easily & keep them in a smart spot – and downsizing from our 3150 square foot house to this 1400 square foot home last year definitely challenged us to be even more mindful about how we incorporate the most useful storage systems into our home. Suddenly we were living in 6 rooms (down from

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9 Kitchen Updates That Help Us Make The Most Of Our Small Kitchen

“We just couldn’t figure out why you weren’t tearing out the kitchen.” That’s what one of our contractor’s guys said to us right as we moved in last year. I understood his confusion. We were redoing floors, moving doors, vaulting ceilings, etc – but we left the small old kitchen relatively untouched – complete with mauve laminate countertops. You can see what I mean in this post. But to know us is to know that we strongly prefer to live with an expensive-to-renovate room like a kitchen first, just so we don’t rush into spending major money on big permanent changes that we might later regret or wish that we thought through a little longer.

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Putting In A Pool: The Process, The Cost, and All The Before & After Photos

It’s been a full year in the making, but OUR POOL IS DONE*! Here’s where I imagine someone saying “and the crowd goes wiiiiild” (and the crowd, in this case, is the five members of our household – including Burger shaking a tiny pom-pom). Today we’ve got one HUGE post full of info about the entire process, the budget, and, of course, the finished result. We’re also answering some of the most common questions we got throughout this project. *Well, mostly done. More on that later Neither of us have ever lived in a house with a pool or even in an area of the country where residential pools are very common. So this was

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Before & After Photos: 14 Months In!

Note: This post was born from an updated Before & After page that we heard people were having trouble finding (since it wasn’t at the top of our blog feed). So here it is, forever immortalized as a chronological post. And now, since we’ll continue to update our Before & After page over time, we have this post frozen in time, which is nice to look back on. Wish we had done it around 6 months in and at the year mark too. We downsized to this 1,400 square foot house in Northwest Florida on May of 2020 after a fast, furious, and long-distance three-month renovation. You can read more about how we found ourselves

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Building An Easy Privacy Trellis (With 2 Pieces Of Wood + 1 Planter Box)

BRB, just changing the name of this blog to “Solving Problems With Plants.” And I know we promised a huge pool post, but the pool is still very much in progress. Hopefully it’ll be done next month and we can write one big breakdown with approximately 473 photos. But back to how plants can not only hide ugly stuff, they can also offer some pretty great privacy, as we’re about to demonstrate below. One of the things that contributes to our house being extra walkable to shops, parks, the beach, and restaurants is that it’s less like a sprawling suburban neighborhood due to the lots being a good deal smaller (you can read more about

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A Simple DIY Outdoor Plant Shelf To Disguise Ugly Utility Boxes

When we shared pictures of our front porch last fall, we said that our decorating strategy out here was basically “plants and more plants.” It helps visually connect the porch to all of the greenery surrounding our house and – as we’ll show you today – it’s also helping us hide some less-than-pretty parts of this outdoor area. Let’s call them wall warts. Three large rectangular wall warts. But more on that in a second. First let’s travel back in time to what this all looked like last February when we put an offer in on this house (that’s our realtor in the photo below) As you can see, we’ve already come quite a long

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Our Bedroom Ten Months In (Houston, We Have A Closet!)

Long story short, instead of having 8 doors that lead outside in our bedroom (yes, we really had that many), we now have 6. And spoiler alert: it’s still plenty. We really just use the middle set along this huge wall of doors to go in and out, but the view and the light that the other doors let in is truly a room-making detail. We love the view in here and all of the brightness that shines in, and the addition of the fence for our own little private courtyard out there has been so nice. It not only makes the yard feel more private, it makes the bedroom feel more nestled and private

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How We Created A Cozy Fire Pit Area In Our Formerly Boring Side Yard

We’ve been enjoying this fire pit hangout spot for months now, but it hasn’t been on the blog… until today. This is basically a lesson in how a fence can make a HUGE difference in defining an area, which can lead to adding some simple outdoor furnishings (in this case, it was four adirondak chairs and a fire pit – which hit the ground and instantly created an entirely new “outdoor room” for our whole family to enjoy). We hang out here and make s’mores at least once a week (and sometimes a lot more than that), so it has been a very welcome addition. Especially during a time when everyone is spending A LOT

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